Name's Jason Thibeault. I'm an IT guy, skeptic, feminist, gamer and atheist, and love OSS, science of all stripes (especially space-related stuff), and debating on-line and off. I enjoy a good bit of whargarbl now and again, and will occasionally even seek it out. I am also apparently responsible for the death of common sense on the internet. My bad.

In the wake of the blatantly misogynistic attack Feminist Frequency has endured over the Tropes vs Women In Video Games video kickstarter, wherein trolls claimed that video games showed significant levels of misandry as well, Twitter launched a counter-offensive. The #misandryinvideogames hashtag has Twitter users describing all the instances of misandry they could find in video games. Some absolutely hilarious stuff in there, like:

What precious little misandry actually exists in video games — an industry made up of ~90% men — exists as a result of the selfsame rigid gender roles that fuck women over a thousandfold. If these “guys from Misandry in Games” (whom I can’t find by the way) wanted free publicity, they failed at it.

You are implying the patriarchy was only bad for women. Thanks to it, hundreds of millions (maybe even reaching to the billions) died in wars, etc etc. Many Video games also force “Badass Alpha Muscular guy who does everything and score every lady”, which isn’t really a good example for growing teenagers.

We strive for equality. Men and Women deserve the same rights.

Actually, all money we get will be forwarded to cancer research institutes. 50% of it for ovarian cancer research, 50% for prostate cancer research. We aren’t here to demean women or anything like that.

“MISANDRY ONLY EXISTS BECAUSE OF THE PATRIARCHY IF EVERYTHING WAS EQUAL WOMEN WOULD NEVER MISTREAT MEN BECAUSE IT’S ALL THEIR FAULT IN THE FIRST PLACE ALSO ALL MEN SHOULD DIE AND BE CASTRATED AND ALSO BE ENSLAVED AT THE SAME TIME OR SOMETHING BECAUSE WE CANNOT BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE FOR EXTREMIST RESPONSES TO MINOR THINGS AS LONG AS WE WIELD THE MIGHTY DEBATE SMASHER ‘LOL UR WHITE MALE PRIVILEGE'”

Let’s not take it to extremes. No need to go strawman and ad hominem on him. People having different opinions is alright. No problems with that. I just asfk for fairness, and to actually look into what we are doing before dimissing/handwaving it.

The only thing I’m handwaving is that there’s anything to this idea of a game industry playing into misandrist tropes outside of the “toxic masculinity” rigid gender role that also screws over women by taking away many of their basic human rights. Go read that.

Also, where the hell did the two of you come from out of nowhere like this?

I’m sorry james, but if you really think I am trolling, you really need to correct your definition. I come here humbly to try to show you what it’s being proposed, and you simply dismiss it on the grounds of “condescending trolling”. Please, come down your pedestal.

If you want me to show statistic at how women do got extra rights? Sure.

I guess there’s some project about misandry tropes in games (its linked above) on a crowd sourcing website. Probably created as some sort of counter or us too to feminist frequencies tropes vs women in games crowd sourcing efforts. A series of upcoming videos on negative portrayals of women in video games.

Obviously #3 doesn’t read this blog much as Jason has never denied that the patriarchy hurts men. Just go back a few days to the story of the kid who shot himself to see that.

As to the actual goals of such a project I don’t have a huge problem with people wanting to explore the negative aspects of media on men (at least in theory). I think its a lesser problem to that faced by women but its still a problem that could use some discussion. I’m just not entirely convinced this project would do it justice.

Want to know why MRAs like you get a bad name? Because you think feminists don’t know that patriarchy hurts men. And so you punch down. You complain bitterly about a symptom of society’s disease that you happen to get, regardless of the fact that others are getting significantly worse symptoms of the same disease, and you think solving the symptom is the optimal answer. No. Cure the disease. End the patriarchy and the rigid gender roles that fuck all of us over.

Meanwhile, either go read that and see that I’m more on your side than you suspect, or go the fuck away. I don’t have time for trolling right now.

Yes. You have to read that post to know my position on gender roles so you don’t tell me that I don’t know or don’t believe or don’t understand the things I told you I know, believe and understand. If you’re not willing to put in the minimal effort to discover what a person actually believes, you are not worth the time to reeducate.

You are assuming I am a MRA. No. I’m a egalitarian. I know both genders have problems. There are both sides. Women are the ones raped 99% times? True. Women are the main target of domestic violence? Yes.

But domestic violence against man isn’t taken seriously. My girlfriend uncle used to be beaten by his wife. When he decided to end it, he gone to a police station to press charges. You know what happened? They laugh at him. Also, pension/support wards and custody. Statistics show how men only get the custody if: 1- The woman don’t want it or 2- It is proven that the women is unable to take care of the children (maybe she beat them up, maybe shes mentally unstable, idk).

I do agree that the patriarchy should be extinct, but tell me, do you see it happening any time soon? If patriarchy actually ends, what will take place? Both parents having the same weight on the creation of the children? That seems far fetched, to say the least.

And you keep using ad hominem and strawman, when I didn’t used a single curse or acted in a disrepectuful manner. If anything, you are the one trolling here, not me.

@Anoner.
Except, a large portion of rape is Male on Male, and happens within the Penetentiary system.

Criminal charges are never brought forward though, which is complete discrimination. If a woman declares she has been raped, there is many support groups that exists, and the police bring forward charges quite quickly. A man declares he was raped in Prison is greeted with nothing but jeers

@20: So we’re largely in agreement, except that you think it’s not possible to “troll” without cursing. I suspect you are trolling, because you didn’t engage with what I said before attacking.

Are you going to withdraw any of the incorrect assessments you’ve made about my character? Including on what an ad hominem is? Or point to an actual strawman I erected that did not follow from what little content there was in your absurd posts above?

I’m sorry, but “Meanwhile, either go read that and see that I’m more on your side than you suspect, or go the fuck away.” isn’t ad hominem? “Oh wow, are you two just… special.” Do you think writing “special’ insetad of “stupid” automatically changes the meaning of the phrase?

Strawman? “Want to know why MRAs like you get a bad name?” You assumed I was a MRA because my position would be easier to knock over, even after I stated multiple times “We strive for equality”

Again, I feel like this discussion isn’t going anywhere. I came here to show that the project isn’t about “LOL WOMEN ARE SMART, MEN ARE RETARDED THATS MISANDRY”. We actually plan on showing valid points. You could wait for the thing atleast get going before screaming misoginy

Are you not advocating for men’s rights? Are you not then MRAs? How does the idea that you’re a men’s rights advocate become a strawman in the face of the fact that you’re trying to point out all the ways society screws men over (without acknowledging, I note, the source of those issues in your link: patriarchy)? And calling you an MRA so I could point out that you’re punching down is not strawmanning your position, it’s accurately describing it to a tee. You just don’t happen to also be a slavering misogynist.

I call you two special because you appeared out of nowhere and neither of you had any idea what I believe, but you spouted off like I was somehow against fixing the problems men have. Maybe I conflated you with your troll compatriot, but as far as I know, you came from the same place. And made the same mistakes, only one more capslocked than the other.

Additionally, pointing out where I said you had any misogynistic tendencies might be nice. Because I don’t see it. Which means YOU are strawmanning ME.

Also, I need to go deal with my blogathon and you’re telling me nothing I don’t already know, and mischaracterizing me so blatantly I need to just disengage. I’m done with you. Whatever you say from here on out about me or this discussion is probably blatantly wrong, so I can’t be bothered.

“In the wake of the blatantly misogynistic attack Feminist Frequency has endured over the Tropes vs Women In Video Games video kickstarter, wherein trolls claimed that video games showed significant levels of misandry as well”

You are very clearly drawing a line here. That the same ones who trolled Feminist Frequency also made the claims about misandry.

Dude, I am barely beliving what happening here. I come here, without any kind of personal attacks (which are the most common thing in blogs), simply pointing a few things. I actually called out the guy who posted with me (I have no idea who he is, btw. Maybe he came from where I came, but I don’t know who he is) saying that he wasn’t helping at all, and you just say we are both bad trolls, with him using caps lock? Wherein I actually argumented and he just made a bunch of wrongful accusations on your person?

I do admit that I had the wrong image of you initially. I thought you had different opinions, and it became clear that I was wrong about it.

But sure. It’s very clear you can’t discuss with someone as long he has any kind of different opinion. You have been calling me a troll (without knowing what trolling even means). You made assumption after assumption of me (when you, yourself, complained that I was making assumptions of you)

It became clear, that atleast on your “grounds”, your opinions are the absolute truth and can’t be disputed.

But anyway, I wish you best of luck with this blog and with any entrepreneurs you might partake.

But considering how you have been treating me, you just gonna think I’m being sarcastic and a troll. Oh well.

I actually agree with the princess/prince one. For example, I loved Ico, but the game would have had even more visceral impact for me if Yorda had been a boy. (Other people similarly wish that Ico were a girl, and probably still others would like to see them both genderflipped.) Of course, calling this problem “misandry” makes it funny again, as though the male heroes get the worse end of the deal than the helpless female rescuees.

Yes, I know. Maybe I didn’t write clearly. What I meant to say was that one of those deliberately ridiculous claims was actually kind of true, though labeling it “misandry” was still ridiculous enough to be funny.

I thought is was a joke, but the fundraiser page seems sincere enough. I suppose it’s undiscoverable by now which tweets were from people who sincerely thought what they were referring to misandry and which were from people ridiculing the project. I don’t see why people should be so hostile towards a project that wants to study misandry in video games. If women can be misogynist surely the male dominated videogame industry can be misandric? That Anoner guy doesn’t raise my hopes about how well or insightfully the project will tackle such weighty topics, but I can’t see anything inherently WRONG with someone pursuing such a topic.
The 101 page on privilege had an excellent analogy in the comments section about porridge, and whether someone would choose to eat porridge next to their privileged companion, or make them eat it off the floor. This whole attack on their project (the quality of their work aside) rubs me as making them eat their porridge of the floor. It might feel good, but does it encourage meaningful dialogue and education in the long run?

The headline on the image that says that 75% of divorces are initiated by women has nothing to do with unequal rights, because men and women and people who check “none of the above” all have the right to get divorced. No gender has the right to force a partner to stay with them. (Are we sorry about that?) The only misandry in divorce filings by women, is “I’m starting to hate that one dude.”)

(I’m not addressing laws in diff states on divorce settlements. Too advanced for me.)

OMFG, this whiner wants to complain that we other white men just don’t understand how hard we have it, and wants to whine about his life and how we won’t do the research, when we already have, and he refuses to just because he “doesn’t feel like it”. He demands other people listen to his (same tired old that have been discussed ad nauseum here) points all over again, but refuses to even do a little bit of research.

Someone who comes in an links to a series of falsehoods, all of which amount to the literally written “LOL females”, is a troll. There’s no room for debate among reasonable people about this.

I’ll run through a quick list of your claims of “female privilege” just for the fun of it:

Children: Women are stuck with children because it’s a burden to raise them, both financially and labor-wise. This gives men a substantial, even massive, advantage in taking the best paying and most powerful jobs in the work force.

Women Prefer Committed Men: Duh. There’s no evidence the reverse is not also true. In any case, blaming an oppressed group for the attitudes they’re socialized with is …oppression. Whoops. Relying on one study is also bad science, especially in social science which is known for having outliers with horrific methodology and substantial funding biases. Take a look at the recent “gay people make bad parents” bullshit study for another. In order to say anything on social topics, you need to compare like to like, and these studies fail to do that.

Women Divorce More: Obviously, because women are abused and oppressed more. They have a greater need to get out of bad relationships.

Gender Pay Gap: Seriously, you’re going to argue there’s no gender pay gap? Run the figures. You can’t red herring the argument with this bullshit. When women are in jobs that pay less, expected to work for free, discouraged and prevented from advancement, sexually harassed at their job, and socialized from an early age to believe that they are weaker and incapable — of course they make less and you can’t fucking blame them for that. All of this is completely ignoring the fact that women doing the exact same job are paid less, and they almost never find out about it because their employers established a system where it’s impossible to discover their peers’ pay in any effective fashion, and often a firing offense to disclose or discuss it.

Women Have Higher Standards of Appearance for Men: Hardly. You’re spinning gold from straw here. One poor study about one dating site, examining messages sent alone rather than actual opinions expressed, proves absolutely nothing. This ignores decades of repeatedly verified social science showing that men act as though women’s appearance were one of their highest attributes (with no similar standard applied to themselves).

Women Spend More, of Men’s Precious Precious Money: LOL. More misogynistic stereotyping. This data is ridiculous on its face. Women do not buy 91% of all new homes. That you expect anyone to believe this is truly telling.

Women with More Partners Have Unstable Marriages: Slut shaming. Good followup on the rest of this woman hating trash. Nevermind that this is almost certainly true of men as well, for any reasonable value of “unstable”.

I don’t know if this is a good place to point this out, but I just ran across an excellent essay using video game difficulty levels as an analogy to discuss privilege, and I found it instructive and awesome! Here it is. SWM (straight white male) was the easiest difficulty setting, and gay minority female was “hardcore”.

Oh. I see that you already talked about this *embarassed*… Sorry about that, like I’ve mentioned before, longtime Pharyngula lurker, decided to branch out into other FTB blogs. Will read more into the archives. My bad.

Oh, not at all, don’t be embarassed. I suspect that the vast majority of people in the entire world haven’t read my stuff, in fact! :) That’s why I was happy to link it, because I thought my take was rather unique.

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